At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees
the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short
instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show him the whole chain of causes
which have been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is,
unadorned by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator
looking down into the arena he is quitting; he feels and knows the justice of all the
suffering that has overtaken him. [Key to Theosophy, p. 162
(1889 ed.)]

That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning
man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life - as the landscape is revealed to the
traveller by intermittent flashes of lightning - is simply the sudden glimpse which the
struggling soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in
imperishable colours. [Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 179 (1877 ed.)]

It is a widely spread belief among all the Hindus that a person's future
pre-natal state and birth are moulded by the last desire he may have at the time of death.
But this last desire, they say, necessarily hinges on to the shape which the person may
have given to his desires, passions etc., during his past life. It is for this very
reason, viz. - that our last desire may not be unfavourable to our future
progress - that we have to watch our actions and control our passions and desires
throughout our whole earthly career. [The Mahatma Letters, p. 167
(3rd. ed.)]

...The experience of dying men - by drowning and other accidents - brought
back to life, has corroborated our doctrine in almost every case. The thoughts on which
the mind may be engaged at the last moment necessarily hinge on to the predominant
character of its past life. Such thoughts are involuntary and we have no
more control over them than we would over the eye's retina to prevent it perceiving that
colour which affects it most. At the last moment, the whole life is reflected in our
memory and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners picture after picture, one
event after the other. The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse, and
memory restores faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the period of the
brain's activity. That impression and thought which was the strongest naturally becomes
the most vivid and survives so to say all the rest which now vanish and disappear for
ever, to reappear but in Devachan....

No man dies insane or unconscious - as some physiologists assert. Even a madman,
or one in a fit of delirium tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at
the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present. The man may often appear
dead. Yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and
the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body - the brain thinks
and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life over again.
Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn
presence of Death. Especially have you to keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy
hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of
thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past casting its reflection upon the Veil of the
Future. [The Mahatma Letters, p. 167 (3rd. ed.)]

...we create ourselves our devachan
as our avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even
moments of our intellectual, sentient lives. That feeling which is the strongest in us at
that supreme hour when, as in a dream, the events of a long life, to the minutest details,
are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision . . . - that feeling
will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the life-principle of our future
existence. The real full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the
minor cycle - not before. [The Mahatma Letters, p.
124 (3rd. ed.)]

Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (5th
prin[ciple]) becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things internal as well
as external. Whether his stay in Kama Loka has to last but a few
moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years; whether he died a natural or a violent
death; whether it occurred in his young or old age, and whether the Ego was good, bad, or
indifferent, - his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick, when
blown out. When life has retired from the last particle in the brain matter, his
perceptive faculties become extinct forever, his spiritual powers of cogitation and
volition - (all those faculties in short, which are neither inherent in, nor acquirable by
organic matter) - for the time being. [The Mahatma
Letters, p. 125 (3rd. ed.)]

When [the physical] man dies his second and third principles die with him;
the lower triad disappears, and the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh principles form the
surviving Quaternary [Kama-Manas-Buddhi-Atma]. [The Mahatma
Letters, p. 101 (3rd. ed.)]

Every just disembodied four-fold entity - whether it died a
natural or a violent death, from suicide or accident, mentally sane or insane, young or
old, good, bad, or indifferent - loses at the instant of death all recollection, it is
mentally annihilated; it sleeps its akasic sleep in the Kama-loka. This state
lasts from a few hours (rarely less), days, weeks, months - sometimes to several years.
All this according to the entity, to its mental status at the moment of death, to the
character of its death, etc. [The Mahatma Letters, p. 184 (3rd. ed.)]

His Mayavi-rupa may be often thrown
into objectivity, as in the cases of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected
with the knowledge of [the projector] (whether latent or potential), or, owing to the
intensity of the desire to see or appear to someone, shooting through the dying brain, the
apparition will be simply - automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction,
or to any act of volition, and no more than the reflection of a person passing
unconsciously near a mirror, is due to the desire of the latter. [The
Mahatma Letters, p. 125 (3rd. ed.)]

In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance,
will not enjoy it at the supreme hour of recollection. Those who know they are
dead in their physical bodies can only be either adepts - or sorcerers; and these two are
the exceptions to the general rule. Both having been "co-workers with nature",
the former for good, the latter - for bad, in her work of creation and
in that of destruction, they are the only ones who may be called immortal - in
the Kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. [The Mahatma Letters,
p. 124 (3rd. ed.)]

Our correspondent seems to have been misled as to the state of
consciousness which entities experience in Kama-loka. He seems to
have formed his conceptions on the visions of living psychics and the revelations
of living mediums. But all conclusions drawn from such data are vitiated by the
fact, that a living organism intervenes between the observer and the Kama-loka
state per se. There can be no conscious meeting in Kama-loka, hence no
grief. There is no astral disintegration pari passu with the separation of the
shell from the spirit.

According to the Eastern teaching the state of the deceased in Kama-loka
is not what we, living men, would recognize as "conscious". It is rather that of
a person stunned and dazed by a violent blow, who has momentarily "lost his
senses". Hence in Kama-loka there is as a rule (apart from vicarious life and
consciousness awakened through contact with mediums) no recognition of friends or
relatives.

We meet those we loved only in Devachan, that
subjective world of perfect bliss, the state which succeeds the Kama-loka, after the
separation of the principles. In Devachan all our personal, unfulfilled spiritual
desires and aspirations will be realized; for we shall not be living in the hard world of
matter but in those subjective realms wherein a desire finds its instant realization;
because man himself is there a god and a creator.

In dealing with the dicta of psychics and mediums, it must always be
remembered that they translate, automatically and unconsciously, their experiences on any
plane of consciousness, into the language and experience of our normal physical plane. And
this confusion can only be avoided by the special study-training of occultism, which
teaches how to trace and guide the passage of impressions from one plane to another and
fix them on the memory.

Kama-loka may be compared to the dressing-room of an actor, in which he
divests himself of the costume of the last part he played before rebecoming himself
properly - the immortal Ego of the Pilgrim cycling in his Round of Incarnations.
The Eternal Ego being stripped in Kama-loka of its lower terrestrial principles, with
their passions and desires, it enters into the state of Devachan. And therefore it is said
that only the purely spiritual, the non-material emotions, affections and aspirations
accompany the Ego into that state of Bliss. But the process of stripping off the lower,
the fourth and part of the fifth, principles is an unconscious one in all normal human
beings. It is only in very exceptional cases that there is a slight return to
consciousness in Kama-loka: and this is the case of very materialistic unspiritual
personalities, who, devoid of the conditions requisite, cannot enter the state of absolute
Rest and Bliss. [Collected Writings, Vol. IX, p. 163]

Atman, or Atma (Sans.)The Universal
Spirit, the divine monad, "the seventh Principle," so called, in the exoteric
"septenary" classification of man. The Supreme Soul. Key to
Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Buddhi (Sans.)Universal Soul or Mind. Mahabuddhi
is a name of Mahat (q. v.); also the Spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle
exoterically), the vehicle of Atma, the seventh, according to the exoteric enumeration.
Key to Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Devachan(Sans.)The
"Dwelling of the Gods." A state intermediate between two earth-lives, and into
which the Ego (Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made one) enters after its separation from Kama Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles, after the
death of the body, on Earth. Key to Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Doppelgänger (Germ.). A synonym
of the Double and of the Astral body in occult parlance. The
Theosophical Glossary

Ego(Lat.)"I"; the consciousness
in man of the "I am I," or the feeling of I-am-ship. Esoteric
philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and
the higher, the divine or impersonal, calling the former "personality,"
and the latter "individuality." Key to Theosophy (Glossary
in 1890 ed.)

Kamaloka(Sans.)The semi-material
plane, to us subjective and invisible, where the disembodied "personalities,"
the astral forms called Kama Rupa, remain until they fade out from it by the complete
exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of
the lower animal passions and desires. (See Kama Rupa.) It is the
Hades of the ancient Greeks and the Amenti of the Egyptians -- the land of Silent Shadows.
Key to Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Kama Rupa(Sans.)Metaphysically and
in our esoteric philosophy it is the subjective form created through the mental and
physical desires and thoughts in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings:
a form which survives the death of its body. After that death, three of the seven
"principles" -- or, let us say, planes of the senses and consciousness on which
the human instincts and ideation act in turn -- viz., the body, its astral prototype and
physical vitality, being of no further use, remain on earth; the three higher principles,
grouped into one, merge into a state of Devachan, in which state
the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new reincarnation arrives, and the eidolon
of the ex-personality is left alone in its new abode. Here the pale copy of the man that
was, vegetates for a period of time, the duration of which is variable according to the
element of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life of
the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone
to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But if forcibly
drawn back into the terrestrial sphere, whether by the passionate desires and appeals of
the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices -- one of the most pernicious of
which is mediumship -- the "spook" may prevail for a period greatly exceeding
the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kama Rupa has learnt the way back to
living human bodies, it becomes a vampire feeding on the vitality of those who are so
anxious for its company. In India these Eidolons are called Pisachas, --
and are much dreaded. Key to Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Manas (Sans.)Lit., the "Mind."
The mental faculty which makes of a man an intelligent and moral being, and distinguishes
him from the mere animal; a synonym of Mahat. Esoterically, however, it means, when
unqualified, the Higher Ego or the sentient reincarnating Principle in man. When qualified
it is called by Theosophists Buddhi-Manas, or the spiritual soul, in contradistinction to
its human reflection -- Kama-Manas. Key to Theosophy (Glossary in 1890 ed.)

Māyāvi Rūpa (Sk.). Illusive
form; the double in esoteric philosophy; döppelganger
or perisprit in German and French. The Theosophical Glossary

[Note: The above extracts have been transcribed from
the original sources as noted. The text has also been slightly edited for
readability; some material in the original text has been silently deleted.
Explanatory words added by the editor are enclosed within brackets.]